Page:EB1911 - Volume 27.djvu/238

Rh Salgadas. The principal towns are Braganza, Chaves and Villa Real.

TREACLE, the thick viscid syrup obtained in the early processes of refining sugar, the uncrystallizable fluid obtained in the process of procuring refined crystallized sugar being known as “golden syrup” and the drainings from the crude sugar as “molasses” (see 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sugar: Manufacture). The word was properly and first used for a medical compound of varying ingredients which was supposed to be a sovereign remedy against snake bites or poison generally. A well-known specific was Venice treacle, Theriaca Andromachi, a compound of a large number of drugs reduced to an electuary, a medicinal compound prepared with honey, which dissolves in the mouth. The old French treacle, of which “treacle,” earlier “triacle,” is an adaptation, is a corruption of theriaque, Latin theriaca, Greek  (s.c.  ), literally drugs used as an antidote against the bite of poisonous or wild animals (, dim. of  , wild beast). The word “triacle” came to be used of any remedy or antidote. The composition of electuaries with honey or syrup naturally transferred the name to the most familiar syrup, that obtained from the trainings of sugar.

TREAD-MILL, a penal appliance introduced by Sir William Cubitt in 1818 and intended by him as a means of employing criminals usefully. It was a large hollow cylinder of wood on an iron frame, round the circumference of which were a series of steps about 7 in. apart. The criminal, steadying himself by hand-rails on either side, trod on these, his weight causing the mill to revolve and compelling him to take each step in turn. In the brutalizing system formerly in vogue the necessary resistance was obtained by weights, thus condemning the offender to useless toil and defeating the inventor’s object. The tread-mill, however, was subsequently utilized for grinding corn, pumping water and other prison purposes. The speed of the wheel was regulated by a brake. Usually it revolved at the rate of 32 ft. per minute. The prisoner worked for 6 hours each day, 3 hours at a time. He was on the wheel for 15 minutes and then rested for 5 minutes. Thus in the course of his day’s labour he climbed 8640 ft. Isolation of prisoners at their work was obtained by screens of wood on each side of the mill, converting the working space into a separate compartment. Each prisoner was medically examined before going to the mill.

By the Prison Act 1865 every male prisoner over 16, sentenced to hard labour, had to spend three months at least of his sentence in labour of the first class. This consisted primarily of the tread-mill, or, as an alternative, the crank. The latter consisted of a small wheel, like the paddle-wheel of a steamer, and a handle turned by the prisoner made it revolve in a box partly filled with gravel. The amount of gravel regulated the hard labour; or the necessary resistance was obtained by a brake, by which a pressure, usually of 12 ℔, was applied. The prisoner had to make 8000 or 10,000 revolutions during his 6 hours' work, according to his strength, the number being registered on a dial. The crank too, however, was subsequently made to serve useful purposes. Both tread-mill and crank have gradually been abolished; in 1895 there were 39 tread-mills and 29 cranks in use in English prisons, and these had dwindled down to 13 and 5 respectively in 1901. They are now disused.

The fundamental idea of Cubitt’s invention, i.e. procuring rotary motion for industrial purposes by the weight of men or animals, is very old. “Tread-wheels,” of this type, usually consist of hollow cylinders, round the inner surface of which a horse, dog or man walks, foothold being kept by slabs of wood nailed across at short intervals.

TREASON (Fr. trahison, Lat. traditio), a general term for the crime of attacking “the safety of a sovereign state or its head. The law which punishes treason is a necessary consequence of the idea of a state, and is essential to the existence of the state. Most, if not all, nations have accordingly, at an early period of their history, made provision by legislation or otherwise for its punishment. The principle is universal, though its application has led to differences of opinion. What would have been a capital crime at Rome under Tiberius may be no offence at all in England. It is to the advantage of the state and the citizen that what is treason and what is not should be clearly defined, so that as little as possible discretionary power, apt to be strained in times of popular excitement, should be left to the judicial or executive authorities. The importance of this was seen by Montesquieu. Vagueness in the crime of treason, says he, is sufficient to make the government degenerate into despotism. At the same time, it may be observed that despotic governments have not always left the crime undefined. The object of Henry VIII., for instance, was rather to define it as closely as possible by making certain acts treason which would not have been so without such definition. In both ancient and modern history treason has generally been a crime prosecuted by exceptional procedure, and visited with affictive as distinguished from simple punishments (to use the terminology of Bentham).

Roman Law.—In Roman law the offences originally falling under the head of treason were almost exclusively those committed in military service, such as in England would be dealt with under the Army Act. The very name perduellio, the name of the crime in the older Roman law, is a proof of this. Perduelles were, strictly, public enemies who bore arms against the state; and traitors were regarded as having no more rights than public enemies. The Twelve Tables made it punishable with death to communicate with the enemy or to betray a citizen to the enemy. Other kinds of perduellio were punished by interdiction of fire and water. The crime was tried before a special tribunal, the duumviri perduellionis, perhaps the earliest permanent criminal court existing at Rome. At a later period the name of perduellio gave place to that of laesa majestas, deminuta or minuta majestas, or simply majestas. The lex Julia majestatis, to which the date of 48 has been conjecturally assigned, continued to be the basis of the Roman law of treason until the latest period of the empire, and is still, with the law of perduellio, the basis of the law of British South Africa as to treason. The original text of the law appears to have still dealt with what were chiefly military offences, such as sending letters or messages to the enemy, giving up a standard or fortress, and desertion. With the empire the law of majestas received an enormous development, mainly in the reign of Tiberius, and led to the rise of a class of professional informers, called delatores. The conception of the emperor as divine had much to do with this. It became a maxim that treason was next to sacrilege in gravity. The law as it existed in the time of Justinian is contained chiefly in the titles of the Digest  and Code “Ad tegem Juliam majestatis.” The definition given in the Digest (taken from Ulpian) is this: “majestatis crimen illud est quod adversus populum Romanum vel adversus securitatem ejus committitur.” Of treasons other than military offences, some of the more noticeable were the raising of an army or levying war without the command of the emperor, the questioning of the emperor’s choice of a successor, the murder of (or conspiracy to murder) hostages or certain magistrates of high rank, the occupation of public places, the meeting within the city of persons hostile to the state with weapons or stones, incitement to sedition or administration of unlawful oaths, release of prisoners justly confined, falsification of public documents, and failure of a provincial governor to quit his province at the expiration of his office or to deliver his army to his successor. The intention (voluntas) was punishable as much as an overt act (effectus). The reported opinions as to what was not treason